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If you’re scrambling for a last-minute winter escape, there’s no need to rely on traditional guidebooks or spend hours perusing the Internet.

More and more websites are springing up to help people figure out their travel options. They can save you time and money planning your trip.

One popular model culls tips from like-minded travelers through social media connections. Another gathers pointers from travel experts.

The sites say they are more personalized than the one-size-fits-all offerings of tourism entities. They also say they are more trustworthy and authentic than sites like TripAdvisor.com which rely on anonymous input and have come under fire for failing to stem fake reviews of hotels and restaurants.

Some sites, like Flightfox.com, aim to deliver savings on flights, hotels or activities. A consumer submits a proposed itinerary and the company’s pool of 900 researchers compete to find the lowest fare. The winning expert is awarded 75 per cent of a finder’s fee, paid by the consumer, which ranges from $24 to $500. The fee is determined by the complexity of the trip.

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On other sites, the payoff may come in minimized planning time.

“This process saves a lot of web-surfing time for the consumer,” says Vancouver travel writer Colleen Friesen, who has joined newly launched San Francisco-based Pilots Expert Travel Network which arranges phone consultations with vetted travel professionals.

“Unlike a flight/hotel website or a travel agent, a writer like myself is not trying to sell a particular hotel or package. And, by asking questions about their interests, I can help them create a curated list of what they might cover on their trip. It’s sort of like calling a well-travelled friend who has just returned from a place you want to visit.”

For those wanting advice from actual friends, Tripbirds.com and Gogobot.com integrate people’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts to find hotels and activities recommended by their associates.

“You’re getting advice based on personal interactions with people you know, from somebody who knows your taste,” said Pauline Frommer.

Frommer, the editorial director of the Frommer guidebooks says the limitation of crowdsourcing is that it often comes down to the advice of someone who has been to a place once; as opposed to a journalistic treatment of the destination and amenities it offers.

“One traveler might tell another ‘Oh, this hotel is the best, I loved it,’ but they didn’t go to the trouble of driving up the road and seeing the next hotel which could be just as nice and $50 cheaper a night,” she said.

Since launching Pilots Expert Travel in October, Ryan Croft has signed up 10 travel writers and guidebook authors. Consumers can solicit advice via phone calls which begin at 15 minutes for $30-75, depending on experience.

“Spending $50-100 to speak with an expert is well-worth the investment if it can make or break your $5,000 trip of a lifetime,” said Croft. “People are too busy to read an entire Lonely Planet book or scout the Internet trying to filter real reviews from the fake reviews.”

Friesen’s first Pilots call was an hour with a Toronto couple before Christmas.

“They were looking for suggestions on the best way to get between Paris/Amsterdam; things to see, how to approach it, questions about jet lag, pacing, how much time to spend in each place, travel between the two cities, etc.,” she recalled.

“I’d guess that they were in their late 20s or early 30s. Money didn’t seem to be an issue. They wanted higher-end hotels. She’d been to Europe, but it sounded like he’d done most of his traveling in the U.S. and Canada.”

Don’t count traditional guidebooks out yet. Their publishers are tackling the competition wrought by the digital upstarts.

“Our new series of guides is significantly more compact than old Frommer guides were,” said Frommer. “We are really going for curation; and we’re telling our authors to only include those restaurants, those hotels, those shops, that you’re not going to find in other places.”

Just last month, New York Times travel writer Seth Kugel compared Lonely Planet’s latest Hungarian guide to online resources.

Although he reported that sales of international travel guides in the United States are down 42 percent since 2006, Kugel found the increasingly old-fashioned book superior in convenience, planning an agenda and providing curated maps.

“If the web is a fully stocked kitchen where an experienced chef given enough time can produce a brilliant meal, guidebooks are an energy bar, packing all the nutrients you need into a handy package that can be tossed into your bag,” he wrote.

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